The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (150 page)

The instructions which Hullin had given concerning the provisions were executed on the same day, and each received his half ration. A sentry was placed before Hexe-Baizel’s cavern, where the food was kept; the door was barricaded, and Jean-Claude decided that the distributions should be made in the presence of all, so as to prevent any injustice; but all these precautions were destined to fail in preserving the unfortunate people from the horrors of famine.

CHAPTER XXV

“BATTLE OF THE ROCKS”

For three days they had been entirely without food on the Falkenstein, and Divès had given no signs of life. How often, during those long days of agony, did the mountaineers turn their eyes toward Phalsbourg!—how often had they listened, fancying they could hear the smuggler’s step, while the vague murmur of the wind alone filled the space!

The nineteenth day since the arrival of the partisans on the Falkenstein was passed amidst all the tortures of hunger. They no longer spoke; they remained crouched on the earth, with pinched faces, and lost in endless reveries. Sometimes they watched each other with sparkling eyes, as though about to devour one another, then relapsed into sullen calm.

Occasionally Yégof’s raven, flying from crag to crag, would approach this place of misfortune. Then old Materne would take aim with his rifle, but the ill-omened bird would immediately take flight with dismal croakings, and the old hunter’s arm fell helpless by his side. And as though the exhaustion of hunger was not enough to fill the measure of so much misery, the poor creatures only opened their mouths to accuse and menace one another.

“Do not touch me,” cried Hexe-Baizel, in a shrill voice to those who looked at her—“do not look at me, or I will bite you!”

Louise was delirious; her great blue eyes, instead of living objects, saw only shadows flit across the plateau, touching the tops of the bushes, and resting on the old tower.

“Here is food!” she said. Then the others became enraged with the poor child, crying out with fury, that she was mocking them, and bidding her beware.

Jérome alone remained perfectly calm; but the great quantity of snow he had swallowed to appease the pangs of ravenous hunger, had inundated his whole body and bony face with a cold sweat. To appease the cravings of his stomach, Doctor Lorquin had bound a handkerchief round his loins, and tightened it more and more. He was seated with his back against the tower, and his eyes closed, though he now and then opened them to say, “We have reached the first—the second—the third stage. One more day, and all will be over!”

He then began to declaim about the Druids, Odin, Brahma, Pythagoras, quoting Latin and Greek, and announcing the near transformation of the people of Harberg into wolves, foxes, and animals of all sorts. “For myself,” he exclaimed, “I will be a lion! I will eat fifteen pounds of beef every day!”

Then renewing his discourse: “No, I will be a man. I will preach peace, brotherhood, justice. Ah, my friends, we suffer for our own faults. What have we done with the other side of the Rhine for the last ten years? With what right did we set up masters over those peoples? Why did we not exchange our ideas, our sentiments, the produce of our arts and of our industry with theirs? Why did we not approach them like brothers, in place of wishing to subject them to us? We should have been well received. What must they not have suffered, those unhappy people, during those ten years of violence and rapine! Now they are avenged, and it is just! May the malediction of heaven fall on the miserable wretches who get up divisions among peoples in order to oppress them!”

After these moments of excitement he would fall exhausted against the wall of the tower, and murmur—“Some bread; oh, only a morsel of bread!”

Materne’s two sons, crouched in the brushwood, their carbines at their shoulders, seemed to expect the passage of some game which never arrived. Their ceaseless watching alone sustained their expiring strength.

Others, bent double with pain, were shivering with cold, and yet were burning with fever: they reproached Jean-Claude with having brought them to the Falkenstein.

Hullin, with a superhuman force of character, still went and came, observing what took place in the neighboring valleys, but without saying anything.

Occasionally he would advance to the edge of the rock, and with his massive jaws clinched and shining eyes, looked at Yégof, seated before a large fire, on the plains of Bois-de-Chênes, in the midst of a band of Cossacks. Since the arrival of the Germans in the valley of the Charmes, the madman had never quitted his post, but appeared to be watching the agony of his victims.

Such was the position of these unfortunate people beneath the open heaven.

In the gloom of a prison the torture of hunger is doubtless frightful, but in the broad light of day, in the eyes of a whole country, in face of all the resources of nature, its sufferings are beyond all description.

At the close of the nineteenth day, between four and five o’clock in the afternoon, the weather was gloomy; large gray clouds rose behind the snowy summit of the Grosmann; the red sun, like a ball of fire, threw a few last rays into the misty horizon. The silence on the rock was unbroken. Louise no longer gave signs of life; Kasper and Frantz remained among the bushes immovable as stones; Catherine Lefèvre, crouching on the earth, her skinny arms clasped round her pointed knees, with hard, rigid features, her hair hanging over her clammy cheeks, looked like some old sibyl seated in the heather. She had ceased speaking. That evening, Hullin, Jérome, old Materne, and Doctor Lorquin gathered themselves around the old farm-mistress to die. They were silent, and the last rays of twilight fell upon the wretched group. To the right, behind a jutting rock, a few German watch-fires sparkled in the abyss. Suddenly the old dame, rousing from her dreams, began to murmur some unintelligible words.

“Divès is coming,” said she, in a low voice. “I see him. He goes out from the door to the right of the arsenal. Gaspard follows him, and—”

Then she began to count.

“Two hundred and fifty men,” she exclaimed; “National Guards and soldiers. They cross the ditch; they mount behind the demilune. Gaspard is speaking with Marc. What does he say?”

She appeared to listen.

“Let us hurry!—yes, hurry! Time flies! There they are on the glacis!”

There was a long pause; then the old woman suddenly arose, with outstretched arms and hair on end, and screamed aloud in a terrible voice: “Courage! Kill, kill! Ah, ah!” And she fell down heavily.

This fearful cry awoke them all; it would have aroused the dead. The besieged seemed born anew. Something was abroad. Was it hope, life, a spirit? I know not; but all rose up on their hands and knees, like wild beasts, holding their breath to hear. Louise even moved softly and lifted her head; Frantz and Kasper dragged themselves along; and, strange to say, Hullin, turning his eyes toward Phalsbourg, thought he saw through the darkness the flashes of a fusillade announcing a sortie.

Catherine had resumed her first appearance; but her cheeks, before still and pale as those of a corpse, trembled now. The others listened as though their salvation hung on her lips. A quarter of an hour nearly had passed, when the old dame slowly recommenced: “They have passed the enemy’s lines; they are running toward Lutzelbourg. I see them! Gaspard and Divès are before, with Desmarets, Ulrich, Weber, and our friends of the town. They come! they come!”

She again became silent. Long did they listen; but the vision was gone. Seconds followed seconds slowly like centuries. At length, Hexe-Baizel, in an angry voice, began to say: “She is mad! She saw nothing! Marc, I know him: he is making fun of us. What does it matter to him if we perish? So long as he has his bottle and tobacco and can smoke his pipe in peace by the fireside, all the rest is nothing. Ah, the wretch!”

Then all relapsed into silence, and the unhappy creatures, reanimated for an instant by hope of a speedy deliverance, again fell into despair.

“It is a dream,” thought they; “Hexe-Baizel is right: we are condemned to die of hunger.”

While this was going on night arrived. When the moon rose behind the high pine-trees, and lit up the gloomy group, Hullin alone kept watch, in spite of his raging fever. Far off—very far off in the gorges—he heard the voices of the German sentries; “Wer da? Wer da?” the rounds of the patrols in the woods; the shrill neighing of the horses at the picket, and the shouts of their keepers. Toward midnight the worthy fellow fell asleep like the rest. When he awoke, the clock of the village of Charmes struck four. At the sound of the distant chimes, Hullin shook off his drowsiness, and he opened his eyes. As he gazed unconsciously into the darkness, trying to collect his thoughts, the vague glimmer of a torch passed before his eyes. A feeling of dread came over him, and he said to himself: “Am I mad? The night is dark, and I see torches!”

Nevertheless, the flame reappeared; he looked at it, then raised himself quickly, resting his contracted face for a second in his hand. At length, hazarding one more look, he distinctly saw a fire on the Giromani, on the other side of Blanru—a fire which swept the heavens with its purple wings, causing the shadows of the pines to dance on the snow. Recalling to himself that this signal had been agreed upon between him and Piorette to announce an attack, he trembled from head to foot, his face streamed with perspiration, and, walking in the dark, groping like a blind man with his hands outstretched, he stammered, “Catherine, Louise, Jérome.” But no one answered. Still groping about, thinking he was walking while he did not make a step, the unfortunate man fell down, exclaiming, “My children! Catherine! they come! We are saved!”

A vague sound immediately arose. One would have said that the dead were awaking. There was a shrill laugh: it was Hexe-Baizel, gone mad from her sufferings.

Then Catherine exclaimed: “Hullin! Hullin! who spoke?”

Jean-Claude, recovering from his emotion, said, in firmer tones: “Jérome, Catherine, Materne, and the others, are you dead? Do you not see that fire down there, in the direction of Blanru? It is Piorette, who is coming to our assistance.”

At the same instant, a deep boom rolled along the gorges of the Jägerthal, like the rumbling of a storm. The summoning trumpet of the Judgment could not have produced a greater effect on the besieged: they suddenly awoke.

“It is Piorette! it is Marc!” cried broken, harsh voices, such as might have belonged to skeletons; “they are coming to our aid!”

And all the wretched creatures tried to rise: some sobbed; but they had no longer any tears to shed. A second report brought them upright.

“They are firing in detachments,” said Hullin. “Ours are doing so too. We have soldiers in lines! France forever!”

“Yes,” replied Jérome. “Mother Catherine was right; the Phalsbourgers are coming to our assistance; they are descending the hills of the Sarre; and there is Piorette, who is now attacking by Blanru.”

Indeed, the fusillade now began to resound on both sides at once, toward the plateau of Bois-de-Chênes and the heights of Kilbèri.

The two chiefs embraced; and, as they groped along in the dark night, seeking to reach the edge of the rock, suddenly Materne cried out, “Take care, the precipice is near!”

They stopped short and looked down; but nothing was to be seen: a current of cold air ascending from the abyss alone warned them of the danger. The peaks and gorges round were all plunged in darkness. On the hill-sides in front the flashes of the fusillade passed like lightning, illuminating now an old oak, now the heather, or the black outline of some rock; and groups of men were coming and going, as though in the midst of a conflagration. Two thousand feet below, in the depth of the gorge, could be heard dull sounds of galloping horses, and the clamors of command. Now, the shout of a mountaineer hailing another was prolonged from peak to peak, and arose to the Falkenstein like a sigh.

“It is Marc!” said Hullin; “it is Marc’s voice!”

“Yes, it is Marc, who bids us have courage,” replied Jérome.

The others looked around them with outstretched necks, their hands grasping the rock. The fusillade continued with a vivacity that betrayed the fury of the battle; but nothing could be seen. Oh! how they wished to take part in this supreme struggle! With what ardor would they not have thrown themselves into the fire! The fear of being abandoned once more, of seeing by daylight their defenders retreating, rendered them speechless with terror.

Day began to dawn; the pale light arose behind the black summits, and began to illumine the gloomy valleys, and soon the fog of the abyss turned to silvery mists. Hullin, looking across the openings of these clouds, at length made out the position. The Germans had lost the heights of Valtin, and the plain of Bois-de-Chênes. They were massed in the valley of Charmes, at the foot of the Falkenstein, so as to obtain shelter from their adversaries’ fire. Piorette, master of Bois-de-Chênes, had thrown out outworks, in front of the rock, on the side of the descent to Charmes. He was pacing to and fro, his pipe in his mouth, and carbine slung across his shoulders; and the blue axes of the wood-cutters glistened in the rising sun. On the left of the village, toward Valtin, in the midst of the furze, Marc Divès, on a small black horse, with a long tail, his blade by his side, pointed to the ruins and the sledge road; while an infantry officer and a few National Guards were listening to him. Gaspard Lefèvre stood alone, in front of the group, leaning on his gun; and, on the summit of the hill, by the wood, two or three hundred men were keeping watch.